The Wooden Sea

by Jonathan Carroll

  There it was! In the middle of her spine, just up from the start of her ass, was the notorious tattoo. Because of its location, few people besides Pauline and her lovers would ever see the thing. It would have been a nice secret present for them if it hadn’t been what it was. About seven inches long, it was a tattoo of a feather. The feather I had found at the Schiavo house and buried—twice—with Old Vertue. The same wild colors and distinctive pattern all there beautifully rendered above the girl’s nice butt.

  I stepped back and away. My alarm at seeing that image again, there, was matched by the now-serious need to piss. I would use the toilet downstairs. I was glad for a plan because I was so rattled that if I hadn’t had to go, I might just have stood frozen and not moved for an hour. The house around me was no longer cold, my hand no longer numb from my happy deep sleep. Something big and clearly unavoidable kept stepping in front of me wherever I turned now. And there was no end to the variety of ways it had of saying, Yoo-hoo! Here I am again.

  I imagined Pauline walking into the very upscale “body art” parlor in the Amerling mall and looking through books picturing the hundreds of different tattoos available. Had she opened the fourth book, seen the eightieth picture and thought, “Oh that’s nice—a feather. I’ll have that one”? Or had magic intervened and forced her to like that one? Had any of it been her choice or had this thing taken charge of all our lives now?

  Smith the cat met me downstairs. He’s a good guy who keeps to himself, disappears somewhere most of the day, and cruises the house at night. He accompanied me to the toilet, tail swishing back and forth. Before I married Magda and again had someone important to talk to after hours, Smith (the only survivor of my first marriage) heard lots of my stories. I was always grateful for that and let him know it.

  While relieving myself, I thought of the women upstairs. Pauline naked at the mirror at two in the morning trying on a black eye identity. Black eyes and a new tattoo on her spine, roles that no more fit her than would a pair of size-thirteen men’s clogs. Her mother asleep down the hall, completely unaware of resurrected dogs or the fact her daughter had decided to take a walk in the dark woods on the outskirts of her life.

  Ten fluid pounds lighter, I washed my hands. Drying them on a pink hand towel I thought with amusement and the greatest love that I live with pink. I hate pink. Never would I have imagined that gross color becoming part of my everyday. But Magda loved it, so pink lived all over our house and it broke my heart. I turned off the light in the toilet and started back toward the staircase.

  “Since when do you wash your hands after pissing?” Street light washed across parts of the living room floor, lighting it that silvery blue of chrome and ghosts. To the right of the windows a person was sitting in my favorite chair. His legs were extended out into the light. I saw the cat’s tail flick back and forth—Smith was standing on whoever it was’s lap.

  “Who are you? What are you doing in my house?” I entered the room and stood near the wall, the light switch there. I didn’t turn it on. I wanted to hear more before I needed to see.

  “Look at your cat. Doesn’t that tell you anything?” Was his voice familiar? Yes. No. Should I have recognized it? Was that possible?

  I looked at the cat standing on the guy’s lap. Contentedly too, by the fact it was unmoving and the slow twists of its tail. Smith did not like to be held. Smith did not like to be touched. Smith called the shots. If someone picked him up and tried petting him, he’d leap away or if held fast, hunker down and growl. I was the one exception. Because he knew I respected him and his ways, the cat let me pick him up. He usually stuck around a while—maybe even purring now and then.

  But more than the cat it was the shoes that did it. Until I focused on the shoes I couldn’t, or perhaps didn’t want to, put all of the pieces together and recognize who was sitting in my chair with my cat on his lap. But the shoes lit by that sexy light said what I probably already knew.

  When I was a kid, boys in our town wore only one kind of shoes—high-top sneakers. Black. The brand could be either Converse Chuck Taylors or PF Flyers, but nothing else. If you didn’t go with that flow, you were a no. Kids like to imagine themselves individualists, but no one outside of the military is as strict in their dress code as teenagers.

  So when my father came back from a business trip to Dallas and handed me a pair of orange cowboy boots—orange–I had to fight myself not to laugh. Cowboy boots? Who did he think I was, the fucking Lone Ranger? I loved my old man, even in my mean days, but sometimes he had no clue. I took the boots into my room and tossed them into the black hole that was my closet. Adios, pardner.

  But the next morning I went to the closet for a shirt and there they were, all bright and shiny and still orange. I looked at them. Then I looked at my terminally ratty black sneakers on the floor. Then I smiled, I picked up the boots, put them on, and walked out into a new day. I was the worst kid in town. The baddest. The few people in Crane’s View who didn’t hate me should have. If I felt like being Roy Rogers with giddyap footwear, not one of my peers in his right mind would challenge or make fun of me to my face because they knew I’d eat them alive. I wore those cowboy boots until there was nothing left of them and was sorry the day I had to throw them away.

  The night light through the window fell in a wide stripe across orange cowboy boots. From where I stood they looked new. I ran my eyes up the boots to the leg, the body, and with a pause for my mind to catch its breath, I finally looked at his face. “Son of a bitch!”

  “No, ape of my heart!”

  It was me, seventeen years old.

  “I’m dead, right? I died but didn’t know it. All this weird stuff that’s been happening is because I’m dead, right?”

  “Nope.” He gently lifted Smith off his lap and placed him on the floor. As he moved forward, the light touched his shirt. My heart lurched because I remembered that shirt! Broad blue-and-black checks, I had stolen it from a store on Forty-fifth Street in the city. I put it on in the dressing room, pulled off all the sales tags, left my other shirt on a hanger, and walked out of the place.

  “No, you’re not dead. You’re not dead and I’m not dead. I don’t know where the hell I’ve been, but fuck it—the kid’s back! Aren’t you glad to see the old ape?”

  Ape of my heart. I hadn’t heard that phrase in years. Once my father came down to the police station to get me. When we were out on the street again he grabbed my neck and shook me. He was a small man and not strong, but when he was mad he scared the shit out of me. Maybe because I loved him so much but couldn’t stop disappointing him. Part of me desperately wanted him to be proud. Most of me stuck its ass in his face and, by my permanent bad behavior, said he could kiss either cheek. Why he continued to love me was a source of wonder.

  “You’re a fucking ape, Frannie. You’re the fucking ape of my heart. God damn you.”

  The word shocked me more than anything else did. My father seldom cursed and he never used that word. He was witty; he liked metaphors and wordplay—”Getting through to you, son, is like trying to pick up a penny off the floor.” His hobbies were crossword puzzles and palindromes. He memorized poetry; Theodore Roethke was his hero. “Fuck” was as far away from my dad’s everyday vocabulary as Bhutan. But now he had said it to me, about me, twice in five seconds.

  “I’m sorry, Dad. I’m really sorry.”

  He still held my neck and jerked me close to his very red face. I could feel the heat of his anger. “You’re not sorry at all, ape. If you were sorry I’d have some hope. You’re young and smart but you’re a total loss. I never thought I would say that, Frannie. You make me ashamed.”

  That confrontation didn’t change my life but it stabbed me through and the wound bled a long time. Before that my armor had kept me bulletproof, even from my old man, but not anymore. Afterward I always thought of that phrase as marking the end of something in my life.

  “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “Here I am after a
ll these years. A fuckin’ miracle in the making, but all you do is stand there with your thumb up your ass going duh.”

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “Kiss me.” He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out Marlboros, that beloved red and white package of death. I had smoked them all my life and loved every single one. Magda wanted me to stop but I said no dice.

  “You want one?”

  I nodded and crossed the room for it. He shook the pack and a couple slid out. He handed me a dented Zippo lighter. Immediately recognizing it, I smiled. Engraved on the side was FRANNIE AND SUSAN—LOVE FOREVER. Susan Ginnety, now mayor of Crane’s View, back then love slave to yours truly.

  “I forgot about this lighter. Do you know what happened to Susan?”

  He lit his and took a jumbo drag. “No, and don’t tell me. Listen, we got to talk about all these things. You want to do it here or outside? It’s the same to me.” His voice was Joe Cool, but it was clear he preferred going out. I was wearing a sweat suit. I needed some shoes and a coat.

  When I was ready I opened the back door as quietly as I could and gestured for him to go before me.

  “Don’t worry about anybody hearing us. When I’m around, no one’ll ever miss you.”

  “How does that work?”

  He brought his two index fingers together and touched the tips. “When you and I are together everything else stops, understand? People, things, the whole works.”

  I looked down and saw the cat was going out with us. “Everything but Smith.”

  “Yeah, well, we’re going to need him.”

  I looked at young me one foot away, then at Smith. “Why doesn’t this disturb me more?”

  “Because you knew it was coming a long time ago.”

  “Because I knew what was coming? You’re smiling.”

  “I’m laughing my ass off. Let’s go.”

  Cat Folding

  A fat white gob of spit landed with a loud splat inches from my foot. I stared at it and then turned slowly to look at him. I knew exactly what he was doing and why. “If I knock you out will I feel it?”

  His right hand froze bringing the cigarette to his mouth. “Try me, motherfucker. Just try.” His voice was all balls and threat. At one time in my history that voice had frightened half the county. Tonight standing there it only made me want to pat him on the head and say now, now, everything’s all right, little fellow. You don’t need to spit at me to make your point.

  “Remember, Junior, I got the advantage here cause I know both you and me. You only know you—not what you’ll be like in thirty years.”

  He flicked the cigarette away. It bounced far out in the street, throwing up a burst of gold and red sparks. When he spoke his tone had lost the anger and was only unhappiness. “How could you end up like this? I was sitting in that house thinking, ‘This is it?’ This is how it’ll be for me? Yellow chairs with flowers on them and last week’s Time magazine? Bill Gates. Who the fuck is Bill Gates? What happened to you? What happened to me?”

  “You grew up. Things changed. What did you think life would be like when you got older?”

  He nodded toward the house. “Not that! Not what you got. Not Father Knows Best or The Andy Griffith Show. Anything but that.”

  “What then?”

  His voice dropped back down to earth and became dreamy, slow. “I don’t know—a nice apartment in the city, maybe. Or out in LA. Shag rugs, white leather furniture, cool stereo. And women—lots and lots of women. But you’re married! You married Magda Ostrova, for Christ’s sake! Skanky little Magda in the tenth grade.”

  “You don’t think she’s pretty?”

  “She’s… all right. She’s a woman. I mean, she’s like forty years old!”

  “So am I, bro. Older.”

  “I know. I’m still wrapping my head around that.” Looking at the ground, he nodded. “Hey, don’t get me wrong—”

  “It’s all right.”

  Walking down my street I tried to see my world through his eyes. How different did it look from thirty years ago? What had changed? Whenever I thought about Crane’s View it comforted me that almost nothing ever changed here except some shops downtown and a new house or two. But from his perspective it might have been another world.

  Home is where you’re most comfortable. But the comfort you know as a teen isn’t the same as an adult’s. When I was a kid, Crane’s View was the diving board that would launch me into the big pool. I jumped up and down on it, checked the springiness, thought about what kind of dive to make. When I was ready, I ran down it and threw myself into the air with all the courage and blind trust I could muster. I was comfortable in the town when I was young because I knew one day I’d be leaving and going on to great things. No doubt about it. Despite the fact I did lousy in school, had a police record and no respect for anyone’s rules, I was sure the water into which I’d be jumping would be both welcoming and warm.

  “Where’s Dad?”

  “Died four years ago. He’s up in the graveyard if you want to go visit him.”

  “Did he like what’s happened to you?”

  “Yeah, he was pretty happy with me.”

  “He thought I was a fuckup.” He tried sounding amused but behind it was deep regret.

  “You were a fuckup. Don’t forget—I was there. I was you.”

  We moved on in silence. It was a chilly night. I felt the cold stone sidewalk through the thin soles of my shoes.

  “What’s the girl like? Magda’s daughter.”

  “Pauline? Very smart, does well in school. Keeps to herself.”

  “So what’s she doing posing naked in front of a mirror in the middle of the night?”

  “Trying on different identities, I guess.”

  “She’s not bad looking. Especially if she grows some tits.”

  Something big in me twitched. I didn’t like that kind of talk about my stepdaughter, especially after the embarrassment of having just seen her naked myself. A moment later I was grinning because I realized it was me saying it. Seventeen-year-old me. Then he said something else that took my mind in another direction.

  “You’re going to have to help me a lot ‘cause I don’t know anything.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He stopped and touched my arm. It was a brief touch, as if he didn’t want to but it was necessary. “I know a few things but not as much as you probably think. Nothing about what’s happened here since I left. I know what went on before, like when I was growing up and all, but nothing after that.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “Look at your cat. He’s telling you.”

  Smith was still with us but walking in his own way: he wove in and out of our four legs as we moved along—as if he was sewing us together with invisible thread. Not an easy thing to do, but as with most cats, he made it look easy.

  “I’m here because you need me. You need my help. Take a left here. We gotta go to the Schiavo house.”

  “You just said you didn’t know anything about what’s going on here now. How do you know about the Schiavos?”

  “Look, I’m not here to trick you. I’ll tell you what I know. If you think it’s bullshit, that’s your problem. Here’s what I know about the Schiavos: They’re married and they disappeared from here the other day. We gotta go over to their house now because you gotta see something.”

  “Why?”

  “I dunno.”

  “Who sent you?”

  He shook his head. “Dunno.”

  “Where did you come from?”

  “Dunno. You. I came from somewhere in you.”

  “You’re as much help as a tumor.”

  He turned around and started walking backward, facing me as we went. “Whatever happened to Vince Ettrich?”

  “Businessman. Lives in Seattle.”

  “Sugar Glider?”

  “She married Edwin Loos. They live in Tuckahoe.”

  “Jesus, they actually did get married! Amazing. W
hat about Al Salvato?”

  “Dead. Him and his whole family in a car accident. Right outside of town.”

  “How old are you now?”

  “Forty-seven. Don’t you know that? They didn’t tell you?”

  He blew out his lower lip. “They didn’t tell me shit. God didn’t point a finger at me and say Go! It wasn’t The Ten Commandments. Fucking Charlton Heston parting the waters with his staff. I was just someplace one minute and now I’m here.”

  “That’s very informative.” I was about to say more but I heard the sound of hammering. It was three o’clock in the morning. “Hear that?”

  He nodded. “Coming from down the street.” A look in his eyes—a twitch, a dart from left to right and then back to me– said the boy knew more than he was telling.

  “You know what it is?”

  “Let’s just go, huh? Wait till we get there.” He kept walking backward but wouldn’t look at me anymore.

  It was clear he wasn’t going to say more so I pushed that topic aside and tried something else. “I still don’t understand where you were. You were there and now you’re here. Where’s there?”

  “Where do you go when you take a nap? Or sleep at night? Someplace like that. I don’t really know. Someplace not here exactly but not far away either. All of who we are and were is always around. Just not in the same room anymore; the same house but not the same room.”

  Before I had a chance to mull that one over, we were a block away from the Schiavos’. Even from that distance I could see strange things going on down there.

  In the middle of the darkness the house was brightly lit from all sides. Circling it was a ring of floodlights, all aimed directly at the building. My first thought was mining disaster. You know what I mean—those pictures forever on TV or in magazines of a mining site somewhere in the world—England or Russia, West Virginia. Miles below the earth something went wrong and there was a cave-in or an explosion. Rescue workers have been digging continually for thirty hours to reach the survivors. The site is as bright at night as during the day. They’ve brought in ten million candlepower to keep it lit for the workers.